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Breakfast in bed

Mother's Day is on Sunday, which, depending on your relationship with dear Mom, is the best day of the year or just another day to hear, yet again, about all the pain you caused during childbirth and the ensuing 18-plus years thereafter. In either case, there are many, many restaurants and eateries celebrating this Hallmark holiday with special brunch or dinner menus, and Los Angeles Magazine has a good roundup of them here. To help you decide where to take even the most persnickety of mothers for a nice brunch, we put together a little flowchart with a few of our ideas. And the chart may be handy beyond this upcoming Sunday: As your mom will no doubt remind you, every day is Mother's Day.

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J. Garbee

Fig's Richard's Secret (Left), Tomato-Watermelon, Bacon + Foie Gras Bloody Mary

If chili has a liquid cousin, it is the Bloody Mary. Not for those obvious spice and tomato-based similarities, but because they share that passive-aggressive knack that blood-relations have so perfected for turning perfectly sunny conversations into thunderous affairs. It usually starts innocently enough with a rundown of what ingredients absolutely should not be included. But soon that brunch plate becomes a victory flag of sorts, waved about to illustrate whose Bloody Mary is better (always the one made by whomever is speaking at the moment).

If a drink like this is so personal, why are we bringing you our picks for the 7 Best Bloody Marys in L.A. (one for each day of the week)? Because in a city that does brunch as well as L.A., occasionally even home drinking advocates are going to take a sip or two beyond their own bar. And do note that yes, we are guilty of changing our bloody (Mary) minds all the time, as our top pick isn't the same as it was just a few months ago. With only 7 picks, we also left several other greats off the list for what we can only claim were clouded head hangover-induced reasons. Let the horseradish-slinging comments begin.

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T. Nguyen

Breakfast at Square One Dining

Most days, it's just a cup of coffee. Other days, cereal and milk. And at Pee-Wee Herman's playhouse, it's pancakes, eggs, bacon, and Mr. T's cereal via a nifty Rube Goldberg breakfast machine that involves no less than a few whirling fans, a life-sized model of Abraham Lincoln doubling as flapjack flipper, and a toy skeleton pterodactyl swooping down to drop bread off into the toaster. That Pee-Wee just takes a few bites of this enormously overproduced breakfast before getting on with his big adventure is a testament to how much we love the pomp and circumstance of the most important meal of the day, even if we don't have the time to eat it all.

Which brings us to our list of the ten best breakfast spots in the city. These are our favorite places to spend our mornings when we do have the time to eat it all, when we can linger and contemplate. We absolutely probably left off your favorite neighborhood spot; if it gives you any comfort though, we had to leave off a few of our favorites too, including The Village Bakery and Cafe, The Griddle Cafe, 3 Square, and BLD. Alas. These are the ones we think are worth your time, your money, and your mileage. Rube Goldberg machine optional.

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L. Balla

Some say bacon has hit the tipping point. It's everywhere, from cupcakes and chocolate bars to cakes, pies, and, yes, even guns and cologne. But just because something as delicious as bacon is trendy, doesn't mean it's any less important.

Sure, sometimes it's over the top, but we love bacon, we will always love bacon. And thanks to Fig chef Ray Garcia, we now realize we need bacon both in and on top of our waffles.

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A. Scattergood

chicken and waffles at The Tasting Kitchen

For everyone who spends their weekends either at the beach or getting happily soused, here's a new way to combine the two activities. The Tasting Kitchen started serving brunch about 8 weeks ago. And no, this isn't your average basket of pastries and eggs benedict, but chef Casey Lane's take on his favorite meal. By that we mean, or rather he does, fried chicken and waffles.

The Tasting Kitchen, parked on Abbot Kinney in the space that, once upon a time, briefly housed AK, is what certain people fondly called "Italian cooking translated into an odd American dialect, not quite California dude-speak but something from an odd corner of the coast."

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Dan Cox

Your mimosa awaits at The Misfit

Like any great metropolis, L.A. is full of differing perspectives. First, there are the die-hard Angelenos for whom Los Angeles is the greatest city in America. Then there are those East Coast transplants who mope around town looking like refugees from the Lower East Side, cursing their cars, and pining for The City. To them, the only good thing about L.A. is the weather. And then there are those of us who have lived in both cities, loved both cities, and who now prefer Los Angeles. But to us, NYC still bests L.A. in two major categories: public transportation and weekend brunch.

Our public transportation system may never rival that of New York, but The Misfit in Santa Monica plans to reconfigure the way we do brunch as early as this weekend, thanks in part to the introduction of $12 bottomless mimosas.

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Guzzle & Nosh

Tomato-Watermelon Mary (left) & Bloody Mary menu (right).

Ray Garcia, the chef who brought you the Kegs and Egg brunch with its bottomless pint of draft beer, is making FIG's brunch even better, introducing a cocktail menu featuring six new variations on the Bloody Mary ($12-16), all made with fresh, mostly organic poduce. Yes, the House Mary and the Bloody Maria (made with tequila) are still on the menu, but it's hard not to gawk when they're made with bacon or foie gras.

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Things are not always as they seem at Canelé. Order coffee cake and you get a slice of pound cake with a spoonful of cream and a shot of espresso. Scan the brunch menu and you'll likely miss the best dish on it. Near the bottom, among inconspicuous sides like bacon and bowls of granola, you'll find what's casually described as a "baked pancake with Meyer lemon custard." In fact, it's an oven-warm ramekin of dough so soft and eggy it might be custard, rising into a golden brown mound and oozing with lemon cream. Talk about burying the lede.

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Aaron Cook

When Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne opened A.O.C. in 2003, "small plates" wasn't the overused buzzword that it is today. That sort of dining -- noshy and wine-friendly, graze for a few hours, keep the plates coming until we cry uncle -- lends itself to the night, which is one reason why the two never opened the restaurant during the day. After all, they had Lucques for lunch.

But that's about to change: Next weekend, the duo finally unleashes weekend brunch at their Third Street wine bar. Bring on the duck confit and wild mushroom hash.

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D. Gonzalez

Mr "G" Migas at Nick's Taste of Texas

Trends aren't always a bad thing. Of course, we aren't talking about overly precious mini-cupcake-on-a-stick trends. But the kind where we all benefit, like one that has chilaquiles popping up on brunch menus through out the city. Jar in West Hollywood, Local in Silver Lake and The Restaurant at the Getty Center, which makes an excellent duck confit version. Another positive effect of this chilaquile showboating is that their Tex-Mex cousin, migas, are also starting to appear on more menus. So lately we have been spent our breakfasts getting to know this Tex-Mex classic.

Because it needs to be said, migas are not chilaquiles. In separate entries in his The Tex-Mex Cookbook, chronicler of Tex-Mex cuisine, Rob Walsh delineates the difference between the two: chilaquiles are tortillas, crisped and cooked in salsa. Migas are tortillas, crisped and cooked with eggs. Egg can be added to chilaquiles. And salsa can be added to migas after the egg is set. Just don't try to pass one for the other to a homesick Texan. You have been warned.

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